books than your Lordship." Sedley and his fellow culprits employed Killegrew, and another courtier, to intercede with the King for a mitigation of their fine. Instead, however, of exerting themselves in the cause of their friends, they are said to have begged the amount for their own use, and actually to have extorted it to the last penny.

In Bow Street lived the eminent and eccentric physician, Dr. John Radcliffe, now principally remembered as the founder of the Radcliffe Library at Oxford. He is one of those men, of whose history the little we know is so full of interest, that it leaves us deeply to regret that we can discover no more. One anecdote connected with his residence in Bow Street is well known. The garden of his house adjoined that of Sir Godfrey Kneller, behind the Piazza, in Covent Garden, and, being intimate friends, they agreed that a door-way should be broken through the wall, to admit of their enjoying a free intercourse with each other. Some misunderstanding, however, having arisen between them, Kneller sent a message to Radcliffe that he intended to close up the door. "Tell him," said the witty physician, "that he may do anything with it but paint it." Sir Godfrey's reply to the messenger was equally pointed. "Tell Dr. Radcliffe," he said, "with my compliments, that I will take anything from him but his physic."

Dr. Radcliffe, on his first establishing himself in London, appears to have fixed upon Bow Street, as his residence, as being then one of the most fashion

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able streets of the metropolis. How little suited, however, he was, to be a courtier;-how little fitted. to pander to the sickly fancies of princes and fine ladies, is proved by the manner in which he conducted himself, on two different occasions, when summoned into the sick chambers of William the Third and Queen Anne. A year or two before his death, King William sent for Radcliffe, and among other symptoms of disease, mentioned that while his body was becoming emaciated, his legs had swollen far beyond their natural size. Radcliffe made the necessary examination. "I would not," he said, "have your Majesty's two legs for your three kingdoms." King William never forgave him for this unseasonable speech, and though he continued to make use of Radcliffe's prescriptions till within three days of his death, he could never again be persuaded to admit him into his presence. His speech to Queen Anne, shewed a no less want of reverence for a crowned head. A messenger arriving at his residence, with the intelligence that the Queen, then Princess of Denmark, was alarmingly ill, he not only delayed obeying the summons till after a considerable interval had elapsed, but on being admitted into the presence of the royal sufferer, treated her malady with undisguised scorn. "She has only the vapours," he said, and added with a characteristic oath, "She is as well as any woman breathing, if she could only be persuaded to believe it." His imprudence, however, sealed his fate as a courtier. On his next appearance at court, he was

stopped by an officer in the antichamber, and informed that the princess had no longer any occasion for his services. However, in the last illness of Prince George of Denmark, the Queen's affection for her husband so far overcame the indignation which she felt at the conduct of her former medical attendant, that she ordered him to be immediately summoned. When she herself, too, lay on her death-bed, he was also sent for to attend her. The summons was disobeyed, and the circumstance aroused a general and indignant outcry against the eccentric physician. Radcliffe pleaded indisposition, and, after a full investigation of such evidence as has been handed down to us, we cannot but come to the conclusion that this was the true cause which detained him from the bedside of his expiring sovereign. In one of his letters he writes, "I know the nature of attending crowned heads in their last moments too well, to be fond of waiting upon them, without being sent for by a proper authority. You have heard of pardons being signed for physicians, before a sovereign's demise: however, ill as I was, I would have gone to the Queen in a horse-litter, had either her Majesty, or those in commission, next to her, commanded me so to do."

We may be accused, perhaps, in our notice of Bow Street and Dr. Radcliffe, of having entered too much into extraneous matter, but the wit and eccentricities of a remarkable man,-especially of one whose name is perhaps but little familiar to the

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general reader,-tempted us into a passing digression. We would willingly relate further anecdotes of Dr. Radcliffe, and especially his witty retorts to Madame D'Orsley, which are familiar alone to those who delight in old books, and which formed the subject of a Latin poem, in the "Anthologia." They might, however, offend the morbid prudery of the present age; an age in which, by some strange anomaly, it is a stigma not to have read Shakspeare, and yet a crime to have read Fielding; an age in which, by some still stranger anomaly, the daily newspapers, with all their gross details of debauchery and incest, are laid freely before the young and uninitiated, while it is a crime to insert, in a book, a witty, and that which time, perhaps, has rendered a classical anecdote, to which our grandmothers listened with delight, and which they repeated without a blush.

Before taking our leave of Bow Street, let us mention that it was apparently in this street that the celebrated Prince Eugene dined with Dr. Radcliffe. The entertainment which the physician provided for the hero was plain beef and a pudding. The Prince thanked him for the compliment, "You have considered me," he said, "not as a courtier, but as a soldier."

Of James Street, which runs out of Covent Garden, parallel with Bow Street, nothing remarkable is known, except that David Garrick resided here in 1747, the year in which the great actor became manager of Drury Lane, and when the Theatre

opened with the celebrated prologue of Dr. Johnson. In the "General Advertiser" for the 7th of April, 1747, is the following advertisement:"Mr. Garrick hopes the gentlemen and ladies who had taken places for his benefit, the 16th of last month, will excuse his deferring it to the 30th of this, his illness not permitting him to have it sooner. Tickets and places to be had at Mr. Garrick's lodgings in James Street, Covent Garden, and of Mr. Page, at the stage-door of the Theatre."

King Street leads from Covent Garden into St. Martin's lane. Here, at the house of their father, who kept an upholsterer's shop, called the "Two Crowns and Cushions," were born the celebrated Dr. Thomas Arne, the composer, and his sister, Mrs. Cibber. But the most interesting spot is Rose Street, a small and wretched-looking street, at the north-west of King Street. Here, Samuel Butler, the author of "Hudibras," lived for many years, and here he is supposed to have died; here, apparently, stood the Rose Tavern, at which the famous "Treason Club" was held in 1688;* and here the celebrated bookseller, Edmund Curll, had his shop; the sign of which was "Pope's Head." But the circumstance which has rendered Rose Street classic ground, is the fact of its having been the spot where Dryden received his memorable cudgeling. The "Essay on Satire" had recently been published, in which, besides being accused of * See Macpherson's "Orig. Papers," vol. i. p. 289.